


the fire in your eyes only reflects the fire around us

by BookFangirlMaryJane



Series: Thoschei Spyvember Prompts [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 13 blows up a lot of stuff, A little angst, Dark Thirteenth Doctor, Explosions, F/M, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Spyvember Prompts (Doctor Who), Thoschei, Time Lord Telepathy (Doctor Who), a little bit?, barely fluff, because let's be real, depends on how you see it - Freeform, life-and-death situations plus flirting, nice, wait that's an actual tag?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27628919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookFangirlMaryJane/pseuds/BookFangirlMaryJane
Summary: An explosion shakes the ground, interrupting the Doctor’s careful wiring and sending sparks everywhere. Debris comes crashing down all around her. She curses, throws her arms up over her head and tries not to get hit.Too early.--o--Written for Spyvember (by ineternity and Valc0), prompt was 'Fireworks'.Warnings: spoilers for series 12 of Doctor Who. Maaybe off-screen death, but it's really only implied.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: Thoschei Spyvember Prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017984
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	the fire in your eyes only reflects the fire around us

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is only very loosely related to fireworks.  
> It's also not really fluff? A little fluff? Close to the end, there's a little fluff.
> 
> Spoilers for series 12. Also explosions and kisses.  
> You have been warned.

An explosion shakes the ground, interrupting the Doctor’s careful wiring and sending sparks everywhere. Debris comes crashing down all around her. She curses, throws her arms up over her head and tries not to get hit.

Too early. That explosion is too early, a whole ten minutes! He gave her half an hour, not twenty minutes. Her only plan **depends** on these crucial ten minutes!

_‘Sorry, luv, should I have mentioned a few bombs might go off early?’_ his voice croons in her mind as the shaking subsides. She snarls and pulls herself back up to look at the control panels.

_‘Bastard,’_ she sends back and takes in the damage. She’ll have to do a quick fix-up and hope it works. As always. **Damn** that bastard! She was so close to finishing up.

His laughter echoes through her head. With barely a thought she cuts their connection short. It’s distracting her anyway. She needs to finish this up, now, before the next explosion. If he let one of the bombs go off, there’ll be more soon enough, and she still needs to get out of this place.

The Doctor takes a breath, squares her shoulders and gets to work. Connect two wires over here, cut a cable over there, twine these around that large bit, tie it all off with a bow aaand… all done!

She slams the panel closed, just as another explosion throws her off her feet and makes her crash hard into the ground. OW!

Her head is pounding when she blinks the stars out of her vision. Pounding, pounding, pounding, pound– Oh, hang on, that’s not her head. It’s **him** , knocking. Too frazzled to resist, she opens the door and lets him in.

_‘My, you’re **still** on that ship? Don’t you know what time it is?’_ he teases, making himself comfortable in between her thoughts. She groans and fires back a weak: _‘Bastard. I still have three minutes.’_ At least she should have. Has she?

_‘ **Barely** three minutes. And, luv, I truly worry about you sometimes. You keep on calling me bastard, when it clearly is supposed to be **‘Master’**. Come on, say it with me: Master.’_

With a growl of annoyance the Doctor scrambles to her feet and stumbles over to the door, out into the hallway. She needs to leave. And not listen to the idiot in her head.

_‘I resent that. I’m an evil mastermind, Doctor, not an idiot. You, on the other hand…’_ He trails off suggestively, a smirk in his mental voice. Of course. **Master** mind. Seriously? Can’t he do one single pun without mentioning his moniker?

_‘No, I can’t. That way is blocked, by the way,’_ he comments as she sets down the corridor. She ignores him until she’s stopped by the caved-in ceiling. Damn him for always lying except today.

_‘I don’t lie. Not to you, Doctor. You know that.’_ She does. She does know that. _‘I know.’_ So she turns and races back the way she came, down endless corridors and up a steep metal ladder.

_‘Tell me where you are,’_ the Doctor demands when she finally catches a whiff of fresh air, or at least air that’s not been stagnating in the metal coffin that is this building.

_‘Oh, made it out already? Because those bombs are ready to go off any moment now. Hope you’re far enough away by then.’_ He **knows** she isn't. Bastard. Utter bastard!

_‘Still not right, but I’ll let it slide this time. You **are** about to be blown to pieces, after all. Such a shame. I really like that face. The whole body, in fact.’_

With a snarl the Doctor sets off in the direction she can feel his mind from, the same direction the fresh air is coming from, incidentally. Her feet are rhythmically banging on the metal floor. She doesn’t care about stealth anymore. It’s run or die. And she’s always been brilliant at running.

Simultaneously with her stepping out of the building, a third bomb explodes behind her. It sets off a chain reaction in the rest of the explosives. Hazel eyes are focused solely on the blue box, doors open in invitation already, and she gets one last sprint in before the shockwave and flames from the explosions propel her forward, right through the doors and onto the floor.

With a snap, the doors close. Groaning, the old girl takes off.

“That was cutting it rather close, wasn’t it, Doctor? You’re losing your touch,” the Master comments from the console. She glares up at him from the floor, only tipping her head back to see him upside down, smirking at her.

“Shut up.”

He looks ready to **not** shut up, so the Doctor lifts herself onto her elbows and quickly gets up from the ground. Ow, her elbows hurt. That’ll bruise.

“Whose fault is it that I was cutting it close, huh? **You** set off the bombs early! I’d have been finished seconds after that first explosion but **no** , you **had** to decide to screw with the whole plan. Trigger-happy idiot.”

Her best enemy throws her a grin. “You still did it, didn’t you? I just… made things more fun. It was getting a bit boring, watching you finish everything within two minutes at the first try. All. The. Time. You’re annoying when you win, did you know that? So I decided to see if I couldn’t knock you off your high horse a little.”

The Doctor throws him a smirk as she approaches. “Well, that clearly backfired on you, didn’t it? I still won. And I still beat your record.”

His expression sours. “You did.”

She raises a brow. “So? Where’s my reward, then? I distinctly recall this little bet we made…”

Before she can step closer, he holds up a hand. “Don’t you want to see our creation first? It’s sure to be **magnificent**.”

“Well, now that you **mention** it…” The Doctor’s grin matches the Master’s in every way. Together, they steer the TARDIS to the right and a few minutes back. He throws her a smirk and holds out a hand for her to take. She does so without hesitation.

Together, they walk over to the doors and sit down in the doorway. He made sure the protective shields are raised. She reassures herself by letting a pebble fall down at it and having it bounce back, blue light flaring up in a circle around the ship.

“How long?” the Doctor asks, looking down.

“About thirty seconds,” the Master answers, doing the same.

It’s a pretty planet from up here, the Doctor supposes. Pretty and small and not at all what you’d expect to see if you ever visited the surface. Dirty streets, polluted air, buildings filled with cruelty and weapons. The corpses of the innocent littering the streets.

“Five, four, three, two, one,” the Master counts down, and then the planet beneath them is set aflame in the most breathtaking fireworks the Doctor has ever seen. Her eyes widen, take in the pretty colors of the explosions, the shattered pieces of the planet bursting out into every direction.

“Beautiful,” she whispers.

“Isn't it?” he murmurs into her ear.

Without taking her eyes off the carnage they wrought upon the slave planet, the Doctor tips her head back until his mouth touches her skin. The Master’s lips trail a path of kisses down her neck and up again. She trembles at the gentleness, helpless in the face of their combined destruction.

For hours, the two of them sit there, watching the planet burn. The Master has stopped kissing her neck in favor of twining their fingers together and letting her lean into his side. The fingers of his other hand are trailing up and down her free arm, every now and then stopping at her wrist. She knows what he’s doing.

Feeling her pulse. Feeling her hearts beat in perfect synchrony with his. It’s a tic she recognizes, a necessity she understands, since she does the same thing every time she needs to be reassured that this is real, that he is by her side, that they’re traveling the universe together.

What are the deaths of a few irredeemable monsters against the thrill the Doctor gets when she watches the Master stand by her side as they save the universe? So what if they create as easy as they destroy? If they make and break the world? At least they’re doing it together. Together, finally, together at last. After all those years.

Every star in the universe.

And they’re taking their time seeing them all.

** The End **

**Author's Note:**

> Kay. What'cha think?
> 
> So the implications here are that the Doctor and the Master are friends again and while they're saving the world from evil in a very Doctor-y fashion, they're also getting rid of some of that evil in a very Master-y fashion. I kinda love that idea. So I made it happen.  
> It's not explicitly dark!Doctor. More grey!Doctor. Morally ambiguous!Doctor.  
> Somewhat-good!Master?  
> I'm not sure.
> 
> Don't ask me about the title, I have no idea what it means. It just sounded nice. I wrote it down a few days ago, with the only thought being 'they're blowing stuff up, that's kinda neat'.  
> I did consider 'look upon our work, ye mighty, and rejoice' but that felt a bit too on-the-nose. 'Sides, I don't want to steal from the Master's moment...
> 
> I have a little something already in the works for tomorrow but it's really only a little something and it's less... challenging? They're being dorks, is what I mean.
> 
> Have a nice day, wear your masks, wash your hands!


End file.
